Cape Town city centre’s station deck minibus taxi rank, which serves 1 200 vehicles, is a disaster waiting to happen, according to a senior transport manager.
There are also more than 200 traders sharing the confined space of the deck, Llewellyn Kleinveldt told the committee of inquiry into violence in the Western Cape taxi industry on Tuesday.
Kleinveldt is an operations manager for consultant firm LLK, which is contracted to manage the city’s transport interchanges.
He told the committee that LLK struggled for a year or more to get the city to act on the congestion at the rank.
It proved so difficult to get city officials around a table on the issue that LLK had to invoke the assistance of the city ombudsman.
When the committee’s leader of evidence, Nkululeko Ntwana, put it to him that the deck is ”a disaster waiting to happen”, Kleinveldt replied: ”I agree wholeheartedly. You’ve reiterated words which I’ve used in meetings.”
He said what worries him about the overcrowding is the question of how emergency vehicles will get in if there is an emergency there.
”That is what gives me sleepless nights about the deck,” he said.
He told the South African Press Association that the intervention of the ombudsman helped, and there is now a continuing series of meetings.
”We are getting positive results … We haven’t arrived, but hopefully we’ll get the ultimate result we’re looking for,” he said.
Committee chairperson Dumisa Ntsebeza said during the hearing that he was told on a visit to the rank that it is not unknown for a taxi, once fully loaded, to be unable to leave the deck for up to an hour because of the congestion.
This is a potential conflict situation, he said.
In addition, black taxi operators claim it is ”those coloured people” who block them from leaving. It is worrisome that the problem is identified with a particular race.
He said law-enforcement agencies are not very much in evidence at the rank, which is why operators appear to have a propensity to flout the law, by double parking, for example. — Sapa